MIA2015 - Facilitating Growth through SBG

How can the use of standards based grading support a growth mindset in students?

Presented at GVSU's Math In Action Conference 

Saturday, Feb. 21, 2015 

by Dr. Pamela Wells and Dr. Jon Hasenbank

(Session E6, 1:20-2:20 pm)
See below for slides and resources.

AMTE 2015: Using Standards Based Grading with PSTs

This page hosts the materials for the presentation by Jon Hasenbank and Pamela Wells on the use of standards based grading in math courses for future teachers (presented at AMTE 2015).

AMTE 2015: Supporting Growth Through Cognitive Coaching

This page hosts the materials for the presentation by Profs Coffey, Gerson, and Hasenbank on the use of Cognitive Coaching(SM) for preservice teacher field supervision (presented at AMTE 2015).

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Coaching Information and Resources:

• Cognitive Coaching official home: thinkingcollaborative.com
• Dave Coffey's posts on Cognitive Coaching
• Jon Hasenbank's posts on Cognitive Coaching 
• An unofficial wiki on coaching: mynalyssa.wikispaces.com/Cognitive+Coaching 
• An wiki-adaptation of the official reflecting conversation map.

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 AMTE 2015 Slides:

Finding the "Hidden Wows"

I was working with some middle school teachers-to-be who are noticing some of the aspects of algebra we tend to take for granted after years of practice and application, and they are noticing how difficult it can be to anticipate the strategies and struggles of students who are just learning algebra.
 
One way I get around that is to try to hold myself still with a problem for a bit and look for the hidden connections. With kids, I might tell them we're looking for the Hidden Wows.

Suppose I am preparing a lesson for sixth graders to introduce problems of this form:

Solve: ax = b

 My planning might start out sounding a bit like this:

SBG Indicators - Your Experience May Vary

Uh-huh...

Learning targets are hard to write.

Here's one (of 27) that I used in F'13:

D.3 I can calculate, work flexibly with, and demonstrate understanding of statistical measures of center and spread for numerical data, including: mean, median, MAD, and IQR.

If you tease that target apart, you realize it contains 12 distinct skills: {calculate, work flexibly with, and understand} x {mean, median, MAD, and IQR}.

That's a problem: such a complex target is very difficult to assess. Do they have to show all parts on a single task for a proficient score? Can they piece it together over several tasks? If so, how do we keep track?

So I swore off using complex targets for my Su'13 College Algebra course:

PSTs: "What I will do to make sure my elem students have a good math experience?"

I try to give my students plenty of opportunity to reflect on their growth as we approach the end of the semester. With that goal in mind, I had my students tell me what they remembered about their experiences with mathematics while they were in elementary school. You can read their responses by clicking the image.

Fast forward to the end of the semester. In our last week, I printed out those responses, cut them into slips of paper, and gave one slip to each student at random. They read their quote and talked about it at their table. Then they got up and found a partner ("find someone who has similar shoes") and read each other their quotes while discussing how they wanted their future students to say about their elementary math experiences.

Spurious correlations, three ways

I stumbled across a collection of spurious correlations a while back.

Here is one of them that struck me, in part because the data set links sour cream consumption per capita and motorcycle riders killed in non-collision transport accidents, but also because it is presented in odd sort of way.

Headline: Sour cream consumption linked to greater risk of non-collision transport death by motorcycle.